Immigration Detriment In America

Despite claims that immigrants are a detriment to the U.S. it is clear that immigrants facilitate economic growth through providing manpower to growing industries, lowering the price of production, and bringing new ideas and entrepreneurship to the US.

Opponents assert that immigrants take American jobs and lower wages which hurts the American people . Such argument began in the mid-nineteenth century when, “Resentment toward women and other minority workers [immigrants] was fueled in part by fears that they would take jobs away from white men because employers could, and did, pay them less” (“The Labor Movement”). Indeed, some Americans lost their jobs to immigrants willing to work for less. In fact, the ample supply of immigrant labor made it easy to

This was especially problematic for workers who were trying to protest working conditions either by joining a union or participating in a strike. For instance, “Coal miners endured particularly dangerous and miserable working conditions. In addition, many in the industry had lost their jobs to newly arrived and lower-paid European immigrants” (“The Labor Movement”). Surely, it is only logical to replace a defiant worker with one eager for the job. However, the loss for the native-born worker was immense. Even if workers did not lose their job they might still see a significant decrease in their salary. Sen. James Slater, the Senator of Oregon in 1882, explains in respect to the passing of a Chinese immigration ban, “‘We understand it to be a measure to protect labor, to keep him from being ground down by the capitalists by employing Chinese labor so cheaply that the white man, or the American citizen, if you prefer the term, is unable to live at the prices for which these immigrants will work’” (Bohanon).